New homes to rise where Montgomery Gardens was demolished

Where three buildings were once leveled with the flip of a switch, a new building will rise. And it started the old-fashioned way -- with a few shovels in the ground.

Jersey City officials, along state and federal officials and the developer, broke ground last week on a mixed-income apartment complex at the site of the former Montgomery Gardens public housing complex.

The Montgomery Gardens Family Phase 1 project, being developed by Michaels Development Company, is being funded by a combination of sources, including $13.9 million in federal Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery assistance.

Assemblyman Raj Mukherji and Steven on the same podium, what a blessing. Its difficult to find a more opportunistic phony in government. Raj, knows no shame!! Raj, stop taking credit for the work Maria Maio did to turn the housing authority around. Your statements on your website are a disgrace!! The staff of the housing authority, lead by Maria Maio performed miracles at that agency long before you begged Healy to put you on the Board. YOU didn't turn the housing authority around, Maria and the staff did!!!

the design is a vast improvemet. i hope they strike the right balance between poor/section 8 and moderate/higher income folks so that low-lifes know that their behaviour will not be tolerated.

...and the Catherine Todd Apartments tomorrow.

But I guess if the building is structurally sound, better to renovate it rather than tear it down and start over.Hope the seniors will enjoy living there, situated as it is at the foot of a steep hill they'll have to climb to get up to the stores around McGinley Square...

But I guess if the building is structurally sound, better to renovate it rather than tear it down and start over.Hope the seniors will enjoy living there, situated as it is at the foot of a steep hill they'll have to climb to get up to the stores around McGinley Square...

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Assemblyman Raj Mukherji, and other public officials today headlined a groundbreaking for Catherine Todd Apartments at the Montgomery Gardens site, an outdated public housing community that is being completely modernized as part of the Jersey City Housing Authority’s (JCHA) revitalization plan for the McGinley Square-Montgomery Street Corridor.“This is a great day for Jersey City,” said Mayor Fulop. “The McGinley Square-Montgomery Gardens neighborhood has many tremendous assets, including easy public transit, varied housing stock and community assets, as well as vibrant and diverse surroundings. Consistent with its history of revitalizing neighborhoods into viable, mixed-income communities, the Housing Authority’s efforts here are the first steps in our vision to transform the entire McGinley Square area.”

Not again!!!! You write like there aren't any black and hispanic folk living in The Beacon. You write as if we have done something wrong by living in a clean, comfortable building. I have nothing against low income folk, nor am I afraid of them. I am just not comfortable with violent criminals from any walks of life--who is? If someone in The Beacon is violent they may be arrested more quickly than in MG because it is harder to hide here.

You write as if you disrespect us because of whatever amount of success we have achieved, never bothering to care how hard we worked or what sacrifices we made to attain it. I was poor most of my life, and I mean 'no food' poor. My life is better, not because of what I have, but because of who I have. I have them because I respect people and myself today. Life is tough for everyone, we just have bigger TV's.

“But not all neighborhoods have yet been able to share in this city’s renewal,” Mr. Donovan said on his visit last month. At Montgomery Gardens, he said, “fully a third of residents live below the poverty line, disconnected from opportunity only a few miles away.”

Really? So when the rent starts to rise on the same level as downtown ( roughly $2000), they will have the same opportunity, when they live under the poverty line? They really think so. All they're going to do to them is price them out of the area.

“THE fact that we can predict health, economic and educational outcomes of children based on their ZIP codes is a tragedy,” said Shaun Donovan, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Donovan made the remark last month on a visit here, in reference to the crime- and violence-plagued neighborhood around the Montgomery Gardens public housing project. He came to Jersey City to award a grant aimed at aiding transformation of the whole neighborhood and not just replacement of the Gardens, which was already scheduled to happen.

He said the $250,000 planning grant was part of the Obama administration’s new “Choice Neighborhoods” initiative, which encourages public and private institutions to work together to further all types of development — including market-rate and “work force” housing, retail and commercial space, and schools — in neighborhoods alongside subsidized housing.

There is no guarantee that communities receiving planning grants will later be awarded HUD grants to help execute their plans, but Jersey City officials say they are hopeful.

For the first time, local officials and developers said with enthusiasm, the federal program is “embracing” private developers, encouraging them to take part in the planning the grant will support.

Jersey City was one of 17 communities selected from 119 applying nationwide. Its Housing Authority, which is emptying out the six-acre Montgomery Gardens and relocating residents before demolition of the project’s deteriorated apartment towers can begin, made the application. (The master developer for the new mixed-use housing on the site is the Michaels Development Company of Marlton.)

Maria Maio, the authority’s executive director, said she and her colleagues had been “led to understand that the fact we already have the strong interest and involvement of private developers, as well as St. Peter’s College wanting to invest in improving the overall neighborhood, tipped the scales in our favor.” George Filopoulos of MetroVest in Manhattan, the developer of the Beacon condominium complex in Jersey City, described the grant as “tremendously exciting for us,” adding, “We feel like there is new fuel in the tank.”

The Beacon represents one transformation that has already taken place: renovation of the former Jersey City medical center’s Art Deco towers into upscale condos and loft apartments, right next to the Montgomery Gardens project.

But the condo complex is gated — “and we’ve done pretty much all we can do on our side of the fences,” Mr. Filopoulos said. “We are committed to improving the neighborhood at large, and raring to go, to help rebuild and restore it to health.”

MetroVest has also been named developer of a major supermarket on the Montgomery Gardens site.

Inside the Beacon’s gates, MetroVest will build one of two charter schools planned to serve the neighborhood. The school, the Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology & Science charter, plans to offer a Bronx High School of Science curriculum, approved by the Liberty Science Center. “The HUD people really homed in on the charter-school part of our plan,” Ms. Maio said.

Meanwhile, the 140-year-old St. Peter’s College is working on plans to develop two pieces of property it owns on Montgomery Street outside its campus, near what is known as Monsignor McGinley Square.

“We really want to see this area revitalized,” said Michael A. Fazio, a vice president for external affairs of St. Peter’s. He said enrollment was at a four-year high — around 3,000 — and “we need the neighborhood to be as safe and vibrant as possible.”

The college is about to break ground on campus property for a six-story student center.

It is working with a private developer, Trinity Acquisition and Development, and has met informally with city planners and community groups, including Montgomery Gardens residents, concerning proposals for an entertainment center at 711 Montgomery Street and a mixed-use building at No. 700.

St. Peter’s intends to sign a long-term lease on both parcels with a developer who would build and maintain the structures. They are now in use as parking lots.

“There is a lot of energy and optimism already built up around the idea of an entertainment center in that area,” said Jerramiah T. Healy, Jersey City’s mayor. The current plan calls for three levels of retail and entertainment space, including a movie theater, something that is lacking in the general area west of the Holland Tunnel, Mayor Healy said. The center would have a 300-car parking garage, said Eugene T. Paolino, a real estate lawyer representing Trinity Acquisition and Development, a New York company.

The area around the housing project has quick access to the New Jersey Turnpike and is not far from the Grove Street PATH station.

Mr. Paolino said the other proposed building on Montgomery would be taller, and larger in scope, with three levels of retail and parking for 600 cars, half for the college, at its base. Three 11-story towers for housing would rise above that.

The current plan, he said, is to designate one tower for student dormitories; one for moderately priced housing; and one for market-rate rentals or condos.

In the decade before the recession Jersey City saw housing construction boom. Dozens of luxurious apartment towers rose in the downtown area and on the waterfront.

“But not all neighborhoods have yet been able to share in this city’s renewal,” Mr. Donovan said on his visit last month. At Montgomery Gardens, he said, “fully a third of residents live below the poverty line, disconnected from opportunity only a few miles away.”

Despite all the pretty drawings and Metrovest plans, it sounds like they're going back to the beginning with the Montgomery Gardens project, and nothing will be happening for a long time (the HUD grant provides for a 2-year study). Does anyone know if this means the original project is dead? Or is the Senior Center at Florence and Montgomery still slated to begin in the summer?

And YOU don't get it: You are calliing for teaing down buidings becasue BAD people are living in these buildings. Do you think anyone tore down Bernie Madhoff's palacial quarters although he was shown to be perhaps the most damaging criminal of the decade (presidents and vice presidents excluded?)

You deal with criminals by arresting them, trying them, convicting them and imprisoning them...not by tearing down their homes and the homes of their neighbors.

[And screetching all in capital letters won't make your point, but rather just exposes your inability to communicate. What's next, using crayons?]

And "criminal element" has always been a euphemism for racists who are deprived of using uglier terms to describe poor blacks.

Yes I "get it" but what I "get" is racial gentrification and profiling gussied up with more palatable terms.

Montgomery Gardens was just FINE until some of the "nice" people wanted to move next door. (Now THAT'S how to use capitals...to emphasize words.)

Xerxes, YOU DONT GET IT!!!! ITS NOT BECUSE THEY ARE POOR! ITS BECAUSE THERE IS A HUGE CRIMINAL ELEMENT LIVING IN THESE PROJECTS AND WE THE THE PEOPLE OF JERSEY CITY ARE NOT STANDING FOR IT ANY LONGER!!!!

kudos to you FDS for trying to be rational. Reading this thread makes me forget how truly idiotic some people are.

And reading these posts makes me realaize how truly RACIST some people are and how readily they can hide the fact even from themselves, albeit poorly.

I would never live in Montgomery Gardens; I would never live in the Beacon...but I would not call for destroying one or the other because racists, of whatever color, live next door.

Moving into a poor area and displacing the residents because they are poor so you can be more comfortable is an ugly crime...perhaps the ugliest. Racial cleansing takes many forms but those DOING it always excuse themselves with "nicer" terms that make them feel altrusitic.

Barbara Bush: "They never HAD it so good!" (May the witch rot in Hell)

It's a fact that high rise projects concentrate crime in one area. The residents are isolated in these developments, and as such their problems are isolated and amplified. Creating a lower rise mixed income development instead, is positive for the poor as well as the neighborhood at large. And mixed income doesn't mean rich, it means that more working people will be living there. Furthermore I don't understand where your outrage is coming from considering how you've described other neighborhoods on a different thread- http://jclist.com/modules/newbb/viewt ... id=250299#forumpost250299. You described a property as not desirable because it is on "Stegman Ave [in Greenville], which is definitely NOT someplace to live", and you described moving to Newark ave by Dickinson High as "pioneering", plenty of people already live in that neighborhood, and many of them are hard working middle class people, its hardly Baghdad (or MG for that matter.) How is this attitude any different than that which you are railing against here?

Its never been about keeping people out of high rises. No one is saying that tall buildings create crime all on their own.

But that is EXACTLY what they are saying and indeed it makes no sense. I have read the same phrase, "warehousing the poor in high rises," over and over and over. BUT if they were HONEST they would say what they really meant and that is: We have some money and we don't want the slimy poor nearby so we want to bulldoze their homes to make the area nicer for migrant day-workers in NYC.

Lying about the excuses by using stupid terms like "warehousing the poor" is just a way to disguise their racism and classism. If Montgomery Gardens is torn down and its residents displaced it is a crime committed by the wanna-be-rich againt the poorest of the poor...an obscenity.

Do you think living in a 90 year old 4 story walk-up makes people somehow more "good?" Does destroying a hospital that cared for the poor to make room for wealthy wanna-be's and then adding the extermination of surrounding housing seem like sensible planning for a POOR city. Repeat: POOR CITY!

Xerxes wrote:Hey, I have an idea. Since conversion of high rise housing into lower density mixed income housing is such a GREAT idea, why not do the same with the Beacon? Perhaps a 30-30-40 income mix would be a good balance.Maybe the same would get Trump Residences filled up too.

You have the most nonsensical arguments here. Its never been about keeping people out of high rises. No one is saying that tall buildings create crime all on their own.

Hey, I have an idea. Since conversion of high rise housing into lower density mixed income housing is such a GREAT idea, why not do the same with the Beacon? Perhaps a 30-30-40 income mix would be a good balance.Maybe the same would get Trump Residences filled up too.

If someone WANTS to say "blacks and Hispanics are committing crimes so let's tear down their homes and throw them out of the city" then SAY it. Stand up for your racist beliefs, but please don't talk in terms of "evil housing."

Remember, the families living in Mongomery Gardens were there LONG before anyone moved into the Beacon.

I'm a white guy that lives downtown. I have black AND hispanic neighbors. They don't sell drugs, they don't shoot their neighbors, and they don't shoot 5 yr olds.

What's the difference between my neighbors, and the neighbors of those that live near Montgomery Gardens?

Xerxes wrote:Just read that a liquor store was just robbed downtown for the SECOND time recently. Is the solution to tear down Grove Pointe? Of course not.Housing does NOT commit crime.

If someone WANTS to say "blacks and Hispanics are committing crimes so let's tear down their homes and throw them out of the city" then SAY it. Stand up for your racist beliefs, but please don't talk in terms of "evil housing."

If there are criminals living somewhere, anywhere, then let the cops get off their asses and arrest and prosecute them...that's what they are overpaid for. But to blame HOUSING is preposterous.

If you want a safe lily white community, then move to Mahwah.

Remember, the families living in Mongomery Gardens were there LONG before anyone moved into the Beacon.

No one has accused "housing" of committing any crime, but there is a lot of crime occurring in and directly around said housing and pointing out crimes elsewhere is irrelevant. Its idiotic to blame the well off people at the Beacon, they did not provide the impetus for this project, and there's nothing wrong with them supporting it. I also live in the neighborhood, and my house is not a newly developed condo, nor am I "joe exec", I'm a guy who works hard for a living, pays his bills, takes care of his home and treats his neighbors with respect, which is a lot more than I can say for many people around here. Don't forget that the same people who throw trash all over the streets, scream at each other in the middle of the night and sit on my stoop drinking, are the same people who are popping out babies they won't take care of, eating food and living in apartments they barely pay. I won't deny that there are plenty of hard working schmucks stuck in the projects for whatever bad luck they've been dealt, and its unfortunate for them, but there is a reason that montgomery gardens isn't as clean, quiet or safe as those flimsy cramped towers in newport, its all about personal responsibility, and respect for others.

Oh bull!!! Have a 40 and hang out all day while my tax dollars pay for your house! While your at it, rob the liquor store!!!

Before there was public housing in the neighborhood, it was a great place to live! Once public housing came in everything went down hill.

The culture of don't rat on your neighbor makes it virtually impossible for the police to do their job! So don't give me that crap and blame it on the police. The innocent people that live in the projects are just as guilty for not reporting the crimes!

FACT! Remove the projects and crime goes down. Oh yeah, I doubt the guy that robbed the liquor store lives in Grove Point, I would bet its more likely YOU KNOW WHERE!

Just read that a liquor store was just robbed downtown for the SECOND time recently. Is the solution to tear down Grove Pointe? Of course not.Housing does NOT commit crime.

If someone WANTS to say "blacks and Hispanics are committing crimes so let's tear down their homes and throw them out of the city" then SAY it. Stand up for your racist beliefs, but please don't talk in terms of "evil housing."

If there are criminals living somewhere, anywhere, then let the cops get off their asses and arrest and prosecute them...that's what they are overpaid for. But to blame HOUSING is preposterous.

If you want a safe lily white community, then move to Mahwah.

Remember, the families living in Mongomery Gardens were there LONG before anyone moved into the Beacon.

Not poor people!!!!!! CRIMINALS, PEOPLE WHO HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE SYSTEM SINCE THEY WERE BORN, UNEMPLOYED BECAUSE THEY ARE LAZY AND CHOOSE NOT TO WORK. I DOUBT ALL THOSE PEOPLE DRINKING BERS AT 2:00PM IN THE AFTERNOON ARE LOOKING VERY HARD FOR JOBS!!!

THE SCHOOLS SUCK BECAUSE THE PARENTS DONT CARE, THEY DONT GET INVOLVED WITH THEIR CHILDREN UNTIL THEY HAVE TO GO TO COURT FOR DEALING DRUGS OR MUGGING SOME POOR SCHLUP THAT WORKS FOR A LIVING.